


Between Iron and Silver

by Alexandria_Amari



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Adventure, F/F, F/M, Gen, Gen Work, I'll figure it out as I go along, M/M, Multi, Sort Of, in which a child falls down and stays instead of immediately leaving, literally no idea where this came from, ships later definitely, so hop along for the ride I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13283766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexandria_Amari/pseuds/Alexandria_Amari
Summary: From the day you were found, you were given a specific set of rules. Never leave the ruins. Never meet with monsters. Be careful. Come straight home if there's any trouble. For years, you have adhered to this routine, until a blight threatens to sap the very magic out of the Underground and everything in it. The answers you seek lie outside of the ruins you've known all of your life, beyond strange lands, unknown monsters, and a kingdom that seeks to kill any human they find. But if you have any hope of saving your home, your family, and your life, you'll need to be strong, clever, and very very Determined. You need to make friends, lose friends, and ultimately save the world. Good luck.





	1. Fallen Down

You were very young when you fell into the Underground.

It’s a story your mother likes to tell often to the few friends that come through the Ruins. She has made no effort to allow you to forget that you aren’t her child by blood, but she has loved and raised you with all of her heart all the same. In all of your life, you’ve never wanted for anything, be it happiness or security, and you’re forever grateful. 

You must have been five or six when you woke, surrounded by sunlight, birdsong, and lemon-yellow buttercups. All you could remember was a camping trip to Mount Ebbot, hiking almost all the way to the summit before setting up your tents. You had gotten up early in the morning to relieve yourself, finding a path behind your chosen bushes that wound further up the mountain. Curiosity drove you to follow to a wide, tall cave near the summit holding only a tangle of vines along the walls and ground, and a wide hole beneath, seeming to lead right to the pit of the earth. You had dropped a few rocks over the edge to hear where the bottom might be, but as you leaned further over the pit, you lost your balance and tumbled into the hole.

You don’t remember much of the fall, and none of the landing at all, but your fear is unforgettable. Crying out for your parents earns echoes in the cavern, deep enough that the hole you fell through is nothing more than a distant disc of light. No one answers your calls. As you lay in this makeshift garden, tears and other graceless fluids streaming down your face, you could almost swear that one of the flowers is staring at you. You sniffle, and rubbing at your face with a sleeve, you see that a flower is staring--and grinning brightly. It even waves a leaf as it has your attention. You shift from your back to kneel instead, finding that you aren’t hurt despite the depth you’ve fallen, and just as you’re about to ask what it is, it looks past you, expression darkening before sinking into the dirt, vanishing from view.

“Oh dear!” A soft woman’s voice interrupts your confusion, turning to see a tall creature unlike anything you’ve ever seen. For all you know, she looks quite a lot like a goat, standing on two legs and wearing a long purple robe with a winged symbol you don’t recognize embroidered into the front. Despite her nonhuman appearance, her eyes seem kind, wringing fur-covered hands as she stares down at you in obvious worry.

“Oh dear,” She repeats with a frown. “You’ve fallen here, haven’t you? Are you all right? Are you hurt, my child?” 

The tears return again as you explain that you didn’t mean to wander off alone, but you need to get back before your parents wake up or else you’ll be in trouble. As you speak, she looks you over, taking in your thin pajamas, worn tennis shoes, whining and sniffling and hiccuping as you feel more lost and confused than you’ve ever felt in your life.

And then she smiles.

“Come with me, little one.” She says gently, holding a hand out to you to help you to your feet. She pulls a handkerchief from her pocket, helping you to clean your face and dry your tears with well-practiced ease. “It’s dangerous to be out here all alone...I was just about to have breakfast; would you like to join me?” 

The kindness of her demeanor and her nonhuman appearance disarm your ingrained knowledge of avoiding strangers. You find yourself nodding, asking her if you’ll be back in time to keep your parents from worrying about you.

Her smile turns sad at that, guiding you away from the flowers and toward an arching doorway leading further into the caves. “Let’s get you a good breakfast before we think about all of that, my dear.”

It doesn’t take long to distract you from your fears with puzzles and sweets as she leads you to her home in the depths of the ruins. A night very soon turns to a week, then a month, and soon you stop asking about going home. Her insistence about the monsters of the underground--barring the small, weak ones littering the ruins--being dangerous for humans keeps you from doing much but wondering what sort of world lies beyond the purple stone of your unofficial new home.

Several of your birthdays pass before you realize that you’ve stopped thinking of the surface, or even the parents that brought you to the mountain. Their names and faces are soon replaced in your memory by new experiences--hunting for snails, learning to bake, listening to book after book by the great armchair in the living room of your home and reaching to read and reread when the mood strikes. The winding halls of the ruins become your playground, the human-deterring puzzles shaping your mind and body with switches, doors, spikes, and levers. First you learn to bypass them, then you begin to maintain them, speeding up reaction times and raising the difficulty as your legs lengthen and your endurance increases. Your mother thinks it’s a foolish effort, with the history behind the puzzles themselves, but she makes no effort to stop you from having fun.

A few birthdays short of twenty pass before the chance to leave the ruins is presented to you. You have long since evolved from calling your guardian “Miss Toriel”, forgetting that she was anything to you but “Mom”. Your life, your family, even your name fades from your mind. All that’s left behind is a blank slate and burning curiosity.

And, of course, no shortage of Determination.


	2. Ruins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years after falling into the Underground, a series of events set your fate into motion and push you out into the world beyond your familiar home.

“There’s something outside of the gate!”

You’re kneeling by a pillar with a screwdriver in hand, working at the knee-high green switch that previously did absolutely nothing to open into the next chamber. You’re currently working to see if it can be rigged to punish you if you forget which one is correct. Glancing over to the foot-tall grey Froggit that has drawn you from your calculations, you hum in question.

“Like a monster, or another cave-in?”

“It’s just whistling a song right outside of the door!” It croaks, hopping a little in distress. “We’ve told it to leave, but it said we sounded a little froggy and to go away before it got sick…”

You roll your eyes at the statement. That joke is just lame enough for your mother to love. “Did you tell Mom?” Strange that such a concern would be brought to you when Toriel is the one tasked with maintaining the Ruins.

“She doesn’t want to cause trouble until she thinks there’s danger.” The Froggit shifts uncomfortably, croaking in obvious hesitance.

“So...you want me to tell it to go away. Because you think it’s dangerous, and Mom won’t do it.” You stand and stretch, slipping your tools into a makeshift roll-up case that you slip into the bag at your side. A ribbit of agreement reaches your ears as you yawn, dusting off the tunic you repurposed from one of your mother’s old robes. “Are you sure you’re not just being a scaredy-frog?” You can’t help but tease, stopping to scoop your clammy friend into your arms so that you can get past your updated traps with ease.

“I mean it, there’s something bad out there! Something powerful--I could feel its presence through the doors…” The Froggit whines, looking up to you with a stare that you can only describe as pitiful.

“Don’t worry. I’ll just tell Something Bad to whistle somewhere else so that you can rest easy.” You step around spikes and pitfalls you know like the back of your hand, making your way to the hall leading to the gate that serves as the singular entrance to the Ruins. As you approach the grand double doors, you’re reminded of the fact that your mother warned you never to come this far toward the edge of your home. In all of your life, you have never known these doors to open. Any question you asked was met with avoidance or fear. Leaving your home was out of the question. Ever. End of story. Any monster you met would kill you without hesitation, thanks to a promise “that idiot of a king” made to the denizens of the Underground years and years before.

But still, you think, fingers brushing against the ornate carvings in the purple stone. You can’t help but wonder what might lay beyond. Surely you can hold your own after years of building traps and sparring Froggits and Vegetoids.

Your scaredy-frog friend wriggles a bit, hopping down from your arms and glancing warily at the door. Pulling yourself from your daydreams, you listen carefully, but what reaches your ears isn’t whistling...but snoring. The sound is soft, almost too faint to hear, but there’s no mistaking that the would-be intruder is enjoying a nap right outside. 

Kneeling so that you’re approximately at the level of their head, you calculate for a moment before rapping smartly at the door. The sound pauses for a moment before a low grumble is heard in response, barely discernible as the words “No one’s home” before the snoring resumes. 

You can’t help but roll your eyes, glancing over to the Froggit that’s joined you at your side. Knocking a little harder, you add a loud, “Excuse me?” For good measure.

Silence once again. A low voice, gritty with sleep answers clearly this time. “You’re excused.”

Oh no. This is quite enough. You shoot a glare at the door. Indulging a theatrical flair, you push your sleeves up before you pound hard on the stone, shouting, “Excuse me!” The sound echoes through the hall, fading to utter silence from both sides. You’re about to mark your victory, grinning smugly at your friend before the voice answers once again.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to wake a sleeping bear?”

“Are you a bear?” You can’t help but ask, recalling what you’ve read about large furry creatures capable of knocking a human down with one massive paw.

“No, but that knocking is unbearable.”

You can almost hear the rimshot that god-awful joke needs. The Froggit snickers, drowned out by your groan of frustration. 

“Look, buddy.” You make no effort to hide your annoyance. “Can’t you nap someplace else? You’re making my friends uncomfortable.”

“But I just got comfortable.” The voice is surprisingly articulate for someone that had been woken so suddenly. “This is my favorite spot to lean. The other one that comes here doesn’t bother me that much.”

“The other one? Have you been talking to the frogs?” Your friend shakes their head at your side, equally as confused as you are.

“Nah, someone with a higher voice than that. Soft, too. Real sweet. She likes a good joke.”

“Mom?” With how careful Toriel insists on being, you can’t imagine that she would speak to a stranger so easily. Your frown deepens.

“You’re the kid she keeps talking about?” Your confusion doubles in the wake of his casual tone. “That’s wild. The way she talks, I thought you’d be way younger.”

“Wait a second, you talk to my mom? Regularly? That’s impossible; no one’s supposed to be on this side of the ruins…”

“How else would I test out my best knock-knock jokes? She loves ‘em.”

So that’s where she had been getting them. You had assumed that she had enough free time to think of them herself. “So...are you dangerous?” You ask carefully, inching a little closer to the doors.

“Not to anyone that doesn’t give me good reason to be.” You can hear the shrug in his voice. “While we’re asking personal questions...why’re you locked away in there, checking in on intruders like you’ve got something to hide?”

“I, uh…” You chew on your lip, looking down to your friend and feeling a small amount of comfort in the fact that it looks as confused and nervous as you feel. “That’s kind of…”

His question of “Complicated?” Is broken by a new voice buzzing down the hallway. 

“Human!”

Your blood runs cold, about to shout at the Migosp that’s flittering toward you, accompanied by a smaller Froggit. Your anger is stopped by the terror on their faces, the Migosp chittering before finding its words. 

“There was--was a cave-in by your house!” 

“The stone just...fell…” The Froggit wheezes, winded from running.

You’re standing before you realize what’s going on. “Mom…” You breathe, tearing down the hall with a half-thought-out, “Goodbye Mr. Bear!” over your shoulder.

Your mind floods with images as you take every shortcut you can think of, trying not to linger on thoughts of your mother being hurt by any of the destruction that a collapse could wreak. In your haste, your foot catches on a spike, sending you sprawling to the ground before you’re up and running again, rounding the last corner that leads to your home. 

Near your front door is a pile of debris and rubble, a black hole looming above where the stone crumbled from the high ceiling of the caves. It nearly obstructs the path completely, and you clamber over loose rock to reach the other side. You shout for your mother, your voice sounding shrill to your own ears. 

Much to your relief you see her open the door, her warm smile tinged with worry. Her greeting is cut short by the force of your embrace as you use your momentum from sliding down the stone to fling yourself into her arms. Your nose fills with the soft scent of earth and cinnamon, adrenaline and relief leaving you shaking as she runs a hand over your hair.

“Everything’s all right, my child,” She murmurs, the tightness of her hug letting you know that you weren’t the only one that was worried. “No one was hurt. But it did scare me half to death,” She laughs, trying to ease your nerves as you pull back to look up at her. 

“What happened?” You ask, trying to get your pulse to return to normal.

“I’m not sure.” Her smile is tight, very nearly convincing you that she’s not concerned. “That’s the fourth collapse this month. I’ve never known anything like this to happen here.”

Before you can question further, she releases you and gasps softly as she looks you over. “My dear! What happened to you?”

You shift a little, looking down at your exposed knees. Your pants now have twin holes, revealing scraped and bleeding skin. The wounds are only now starting to sting, as is your elbow and the palm of each hand where you caught yourself on the rough ground. “I, uh...I fell.” You offer lamely.

She gives a soft sigh as she guides you inside, bidding you sit on the kitchen counter as you’ve done a thousand times since you were very small. You have long past reached the age of patching up your own scrapes, but you’ve never had the heart to tell her that much. Obediently, you take the Monster Candy she passes you and let the spicy, honey-sweet taste ease your nerves as well as your cuts. Her way to deal with stress is to keep busy, and if coddling you eases her mind, you don’t mind the attention. 

“You must have been frightened,” She frowns as she rolls the legs of your pants up, pressing a cool cloth against your skin to dab away the blood. “But you really must be careful. Magic holds this place together, and does the same for everyone in it...but you’re made of something altogether different. Flesh and blood and Determination.”

You nod, biting back a hiss at the sting of the rag. This is a speech she’s given you many times before, but there are more pressing matters than a few skinned knees. Rolling the candy to rest in your cheek, you ask, “If magic is holding everything together, why are things falling apart all of a sudden? Is it just here or other places in the Underground, too?”

She pulls a roll of bandages from a wicker basket that has seen more of your scrapes and bruises than you can remember, carefully winding them around the patch of gauze she has placed over your wounds. Monster Candy did wonders for the pain, but your wounds are much slower to heal than that of monsters. The frown on her face tells you that you’ve touched on the questions she keeps trying to answer for herself. “I...wish I knew, my darling. I’m sure it isn’t as extreme as the whispers may say. Don’t fret over it, all right? We’ll clean up the mess outside and make sure everything is safe. And for dinner, I’m making a casserole, with pie for dessert.” 

Her smile is nearly convincing, but the promise of comfort food keeps you from pointing that out to her. As she wraps your other leg, she asks you to gather eggs from the box in the back of the house that all of your groceries have mysteriously appeared in. (Apparently someone has a similar box, you were told, and anything they put inside shows up via magic on your end. While you have never really understood how that works, you chalk that up to magic’s mysterious abilities.)

You slide off the counter, thanking her with a hug for the attention and first aid. The box sits in the back garden behind the house, resting against the wall of the cave. Stepping through the carefully manicured walkway between Toriel’s herbs and vegetables, you open the great wooden chest and rifle through the oddly cold cheese, bottles of milk, and bags of sugar to find your prize. Just as you shut the lid once again, carton in hand, you hear a faint wheeze.

“Hello?” You ask, frowning as the strange sound repeats, louder than the first. You set the eggs on the lid of the box, making your way toward a small patch of corn, the stalks swaying a little in the still air. As you approach, you see that the faintly luminescent green stalks give way after a few rows to a sickly, ashy gray. Reaching a hand out, one stalk snaps in half under the faintest touch, falling to the ground with a rattle. The wheeze returns as you approach, forming words. 

“He...lp...me…”

You push the stalks apart, feeling your blood run cold before a scream leaves your lips at the sight before you. Frozen to the spot, you can only stare as Toriel runs outside, gasping sharply as she sees what you’ve revealed.

Amidst the corn, the ground is overrun by a thick black sludge, turning everything it touches to the same colorless, drained gray. At the center of the mass is a pair of eyes, belonging to a pale Migosp trapped in thick ropes of ooze. Its carapace is cracked, chittering and creaking weakly as you stare in shock. You lift a shaking hand, intending to take one shaking claw to comfort the creature before your mother pushes it away. 

“Go inside.” She orders quietly, her expression stony but not quite hiding her fear. “Go to your room. I’ll...I will handle this.” 

She gently maneuvers you toward the door, though you find it difficult to tear your eyes away from the poor creature. You feel your chest twist, still hearing the gasps and pleas as you make your way to the stairs, wishing that there were windows in your home to see what will happen outside. Pausing for a moment, you instead sit on the ground in the living room next to a vent that leads air from the garden to flow inside. Straining your ears, you hear the faint sound of crying, nearly overrun by the low soothing murmurs of Toriel. The sounds still after several minutes, before you hear your mother speak again. 

You have seen her use the phone that she carries only a handful of times in your life. A matching one holds a place in your toolbag that has been used with only a little more frequency, during your younger years when scraped knees and malfunctioning traps were more common. The person she is calling is unknown to you, not quite able to make out the entirety of her conversation as you hear her voice fade and grow clearer at odd points. She must be pacing, you figure. She can never stay still when she’s stressed. 

“It’s gotten as far as my backyard,” You hear her say, her words gaining that soft, precise tone it usually does when she’s frazzled. “Just the same as before, I should have known when the last collapse was right outside of my front door…” She fades out again, sounding close to tears as she moves closer to the vent. “You don’t understand. This is sapping the magic out of everything it touches--this poor thing fell to dust in front of my eyes and it just...sucked him up. I can burn the scourge away, but what happens if there’s too much for me to overpower? You need to take responsibility for this…”

“Sapping the magic…” You breathe, feeling as if someone has dumped ice down your back. The drained, colorless look of the plants and the Migosp suddenly makes sense. But if your mother didn’t know what was going on, who would? And why was she demanding that someone take responsibility? Did someone unleash this plague on your home? As you feel fear and confusion grip your chest, she passes the vent, voice sharper now.

“Don’t do this to me, Asgore. Not today. Not ever.”

Asgore? You had heard of the history of the Underground and the king that has ruled since their retreat--and Toriel’s many opinions on his rule--but was he responsible for the destruction of The Ruins?

“If you don’t find a way to fix this and fast, it could spread all across the Underground. I won’t let more monsters die because you’re too afraid to act. Make this right or find someone that can. For everyone’s sakes.” The resignation and pain in her voice makes your eyes burn. Hearing the screen door open again, you scramble to your feet to meet her as she comes inside. 

“Mom, is...is he…”

She only shakes her head solemnly, accepting the hug you offer with a shaky sigh.

“Mom, what was that? Will it spread?” You don’t want to worry her more by letting her know that you’ve been spying.

“I don’t know, sweetheart. I...really don’t know.”

“What can I do?” You ask next, wanting to do anything to ease her fear. “How can I help?”

“Try not to worry. I have...the best person I can think of trying to put a stop to this. All I need for you to do is to be aware when you’re out...and to call me immediately if you see anything like that again. That’s...that’s all we can do.” 

“So all we can do is wait. Just...hide out and hope someone lets us know when it’s safe?” 

The look she gives you as she holds your arms tells you that she knows the frustration going through your mind. “That’s exactly what we must do. I know this must be difficult, but this is a problem you simply cannot face head-on. Sometimes...there are things that happen that are beyond our control. That are too big to face. We should wait for them to pass and pick up the pieces if we must, but running against something like this, when there’s still so little we know...it would be suicide.”

Everything in you is aching to run, to fight, to scream but you know that she’s right. What would you fight against? Where would you run? The ornate doors of the ruins’ exit come to mind for a moment, and as hard as you try you can’t keep from considering if the help you need lies somewhere outside of the safety of your haven. 

The thought won’t leave you alone as you go out to retrieve the eggs, eyes lingering over the blackened patch that the corn crop previously occupied. It won’t leave you alone as you spend a quiet dinner with Toriel, or when you attempt to clear your mind with a book that can’t hold your interest. As you try to rest, you wake from fitful dreams with images of shadows overtaking everything you see, friends and family falling to dust before your eyes and leaving you alone in the growing dark. 

Gasping for breath amidst tangled blankets, you can’t avoid the thoughts that you’ve been trying not to entertain all evening. This scourge feeds on magic. Who better to face it than someone held together by something different...flesh and blood and Determination?

You know what must be done--and the solution is far from hiding and waiting for an absentee king to save the world from high in his castle. If the scourge seeks out magic, how long can you wait before the whole of the Underground is consumed?

You swipe a hand over your hair with a sigh. There’s nothing for it. If it means keeping your home and your mother safe, you’ll have to go out and learn more.

Checking to make sure no sounds are coming from the vent in your room but the sound of Toriel’s gentle snoring, you throw a change of clothes into a backpack, followed by your tools and a favorite book before you creep downstairs. A moment’s debate has you slip into the kitchen--your mother would never forgive you for leaving without something to keep your energy up--and as you stick a few things into the bag, you pause before the refrigerator and the notepad that you both use to exchange messages when one is out of the house. Agonizing for a few silent moments, you decide that it isn’t fair to leave things hanging without some sort of explanation. Taking up the pencil, you quickly scribble,

“Mom, I’m sorry. If this thing feeds on magic, I have to try to fix it. I’ll be home soon. I love you.”

It’s not enough. You’re sure nothing would be. You wish you could say more, but there are too many thoughts, emotions, fears to put into words. You hope you can solve everything in time to keep her from being too frightened for you for too long. Before you can stop yourself, you creep down the stairs and into the tunnel in your basement that leads into a shortcut to the hall before the gates. 

The hall seems longer and far more cramped than it had in the afternoon. For a moment you wish you had a friend in this, but you know the presence of comforting company would make it that much harder to leave. 

The doors are just as tall and intimidating as ever. As hard as you try, you can’t call up the wistful optimism that you once had for the world outside. Now it seems just as large and frightening as you’ve been told since childhood. You have no idea of what awaits you outside. A part of you doesn’t want to. But another part, louder and more insistent, very much wants to know what lies beyond the predictable safety of your home. What manner of creatures, friend or foe, that you might face. An adventure lies before you, great or small, and while you feel small and young and helpless, you feel a sense of purpose beneath it all. This isn’t for fun or for some rebellious desire to see the world that’s been kept from you for all of your life...this is to save your home. Save everyone. Save the world.

Your heart is pounding in your ears. You’ve been staring unblinking at the doors for long enough that the carvings have started to fade as your vision slides out of focus. You blink, shaking your head as you try to shock your mind back into full awareness. You’ll need your wits about you if you’re really doing this. 

Placing your hands on the cool stone of the door, you give a gentle shove. It doesn’t budge. A harder, more solid push gives the same results. Only when you press your shoulder against it and dig your heels into the ground, throwing your full weight into moving the door does it finally shift, cracking open with a grating sound of rock against rock.

A hiss of wind flows through the space you’ve opened, icy-cold and bringing a white flurry inside. Startled, you jump back, watching for a moment before reaching out, catching one of the small things in your hand. It’s ornate, small and impossibly detailed, quickly melting on your warm skin. Snowflakes. You’ve never seen one in person before. Smiling in wonder, you push a little harder on the door, managing to open it just enough to slip outside. For a split second, all of your fears and hesitations return, but they’re weaker now in the wake of the wonder and curiosity that this flash of something new brings you. You’ve come too far to go back now, you think with a startlingly calm finality, moving through the door and closing it behind you. The time for waiting around is over.

A new world awaits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Part two! I hope I got the pacing all right; this chapter seems so long compared to the first. But we're rolling along! Thanks for sticking around this far, you're the best <3

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Sorry it's so short! The rest of the chapters will be much more sizable, but I felt this opened it up in a decent way. Thanks for reading, hope you stick around awhile! :D


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